


Put a Damn Ring On It

by jacquessaintlaurent



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Kinda, Kirk/McCoy friendship - Freeform, M/M, Marriage Proposal, it's off-screen so, me trying to be funny, ring fic, tribbles too b/c everyone wants tribbles, wow guys look there's no angst in this at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquessaintlaurent/pseuds/jacquessaintlaurent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, the 1833rd reason why Dr. McCoy will be forced to murder Captain Kirk. Yes, he keeps a list.</p><p>(In which there are rings, mentions of tribbles, death threats, and one very subtle reference to Les Miserables.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put a Damn Ring On It

**Author's Note:**

> Or, the one where I try to be funny and fail miserably.
> 
> Co-authored with cloudsandpassingevents on Tumblr. Go check her out, she's the best. She's the one who came up with 90% of the jokes in this because mine are sorta lame.
> 
> This would never have been started without the encouragement of mindspalace on Tumblr. Big thanks to her for cheerleading and generally being the best.
> 
> Rating mostly because of language.

McCoy had never, ever met someone as distinctly infuriating as James T. Kirk.

Sorry, _Captain_ James T. Kirk.

Said captain was currently outside the door to McCoy's office, the only place he couldn’t use his captain’s override to enter without permission because it turned out that hey, a CMO’s override code trumped even the captain’s. So there, Captain Pretty-Blue-Eyes-Only-For-His-First-Officer.

Except it wasn’t _so there_ to Captain James T. Kirk because he wasn’t just standing there, he was standing there and knocking.

McCoy was 250% done with this shit.

“Dammit, Jim, this isn’t the twenty-first century, use the goddamned buzzer!” He didn’t even bother hiding the growl in his voice.

Kirk stuck his head in. “Is that a ‘come in, dear’?”

McCoy started. Badly. And messed up his signature on the paperwork he was signing, turning the “y” into a “w” so his name now read “McCow.”

“How the hell did you get in?!”

Kirk grinned. “I’m not a genius for nothing, Bones.”

McCoy scowled, squinting at the taller man. “You’re here for something. I know it. You never pay me social visits anymore, not unless if it’s about Spo - ohshit. You’re here for Spock.”

Kirk’s eyes widened pleadingly. “Please, Bones - ”

“No.” McCoy shook his head vehemently. “No. No, and no. No, I do not want to hear about last night. No, I am not here to give you relationship advice. Yes, I’m certain Spock actually likes you. No, Spock is not suffering from some fatal disease, you can stop worrying. No, I will not help you pick out a ring.”

Kirk was silent.

McCoy was silent. 

He thought about what he just said. Well, to be fair, Kirk hadn’t asked him to help him pick out a ring yet -

“God have mercy.”

* * *

 

This was not how McCoy had planned to spend his much-earned shore leave. Helping his chief commanding officer pick out a ring for his first officer was definitely at the top of “Things Doctor McCoy Should Never, Ever, Have to Endure.” 

None of which, of course, explained exactly why he was currently standing in a jewelry store, trying to convince the saleswoman that no, Kirk was not his boyfriend (because as much as Kirk was a good man most of the time and a good friend once in a while, he still didn't understand how Spock managed to suppress the urge to smother him with his pillow each morning).

"So, how long have you and your boyfriend known each other?"

McCoy sighed and rubbed his forehead, silently going over the Hippocratic Oath in his head and trying to remember if the "do no harm" bit had to apply to everyone he interacted with, even delusional alien jewelry salespersons. "He's not my boyfriend," he finally managed to grit out with some semblance of restraint, trying to signal Kirk to come and rescue him by tapping out SOS repeatedly against the glass display case.

Kirk, of course, was facing the exact opposite direction, and completely ignored the increasingly desperate Morse Code coming from somewhere behind him. The bastard. How did McCoy even get to this point? The saleswoman was probably on Kirk’s payroll.

McCoy forced himself to pay attention to her. "-course, if you two are ring shopping, you'd be fiances, right? I'm sorry, I was just so happy for you two-"

The woman was saved from being stabbed with one of McCoy’s infamous hyposprays by Kirk, who, immature five-year old son of a bitch that he was, had been listening to them talking the whole time and now casually wrapped an arm around McCoy's waist (McCoy barely resisted killing Kirk, right there and then, with one of the many medications Kirk was deadly allergic to, and that was only because McCoy actually had a bit of common sense, unlike the 354 other crewmembers onboard the Enterprise), smiling that damned overly-innocent golden-boy smile of his. "Sorry to interrupt, ma'am," he drawled (and Bones mentally added "Mangling Southern Accents" as Reason No. 1832 on the "Why I Will Be Forced to Murder Kirk in His Sleep Someday" list), "but I'm gonna need to borrow this charming gentleman for a bit to get his opinions on a few rings."

The woman giggled, and Kirk apparently took that as a yes, because he pulled McCoy away towards a display of men's rings as she turned away to help another couple who, hopefully, actually were a couple.

McCoy immediately ripped Kirk’s arm off his waist. Kirk just winked at him.

“Aww, baby, you know you want me.”

“Shut it,” McCoy growled. “Let’s go find your pointed-eared teddy bear a ring.”

* * *

 

It took close to four Terran hours and at least seven different jewelers, but finally, _finally_ , Kirk had a ring. McCoy’s constant (but well-meaning) grumbling may or may not have helped.

In the end, as it turned out, Kirk didn’t even need to propose. Spock did it for him, when he suggested they bond in order to communicate with each other better when hurt or in compromising situations, which was 99% of the time. (Kirk, of course, agreed.) McCoy learned about it from Kirk a few days later, when he burst into McCoy’s quarters with a lot of hand-waving and shouting. “I didn’t even know he was proposing! Uhura had to tell me, she just sent me an explanation of Vulcan bonding rituals, thank god she found out about it from - actually, I have no idea how she found out.”

While Kirk mulled over this new development, McCoy restrained himself from causing bodily harm to the captain by physically throwing him out because it was fucking _three in the morning_ (only Kirk and apparently Uhura would stay up that late responding to messages and filling out paperwork on the rare nights Spock had gamma shift because, apparently, Kirk couldn’t sleep without the Vulcan space-heater at his side, which was so goddamned romantic McCoy wanted to throw up - not to mention how damn unhealthy staying up that late was. McCoy better sign him and Uhura both up for a physical soon) and McCoy did not ever need to see his best friend in nothing but too-tight boxers ever again.

But because he was a good friend, if not the best, and because McCoy hated to think that he wasted time on something that were absolutely unnecessary, he had to decency to ask about the ring.

“What ring?” Kirk looked momentarily distracted from his self-proclaimed ingenious explanation of how Uhura found out about Spock’s proposal in disguise, which was that she was hiding in a Jeffries tube having rampant sex with Scotty when she heard Spock and Kirk walk past and decided that eavesdropping was certainly more exciting than sex.

McCoy suddenly had a terrible, terrible urge to fling Kirk out of the airlock into space. Followed by himself.

“Jim. The ring. The one you dragged me to ten different shops for. The one we spent an entire afternoon picking out.”

“Oh, that one."

McCoy raised an eyebrow. (A trick he learned from Spock because he’d noticed how effective it was in scaring Kirk into giving a straight answer, though if anyone ever told Spock McCoy ever agreed with him on this, he would hunt the person down and show them the true meaning of terror.) "I swear to god, Jim, if you lost that ring - “ 

"I didn't lose it!"

The eyebrow lifted a little higher.

"Well. Technically I didn't lose it. I mean, if I know where it is, it's not really lost-"

"Jim. Where. Is. It."

"Weeelll..." Kirk suddenly seemed to take an unusual interest in the number of panels onMcCoy's ceiling. "You know that tribble that Chekov keeps in his room? The one that you revived with Khan's blood?"

There was a horrible silence.

McCoy's going to throw Chekov out that airlock too. (Actually, that's a lie, he'll try to yell at Chekov, and then the goddamned teenager will start apologizing in that Russian accent of his and staring at him with those damn kicked-puppy eyes, and in the end he and that fucking tribble will both stay on the ship, one way or another.)

McCoy took a deep breath that did absolutely nothing to calm him down. "Dammit, Jim! We spent four hours looking for that damn ring, and you're telling me you let a tribble eat it?" He shoved himself off the bed, suddenly wide awake. "I swear to god, you damn idiot, if you came here to ask for my help - " 

Kirk looked at him for a second before that shit-eating grin (the one that made McCoy want to hypo him to the middle of next week) split his face. "Nah, I'm just fucking with you, Bones. The ring's fine-" and that was all he had time to say before he had to run out and slam the door shut to block the boot that McCoy aimed at his face. McCoy could still hear Kirk laughing through the door, and he rubbed his temples, feeling a migraine starting.

Later that night (or should he say morning?), Kirk stuck his head into the doorway, ducking to avoid the medical textbook that McCoy lobbed at his head, and refused to stop telling him about what actually happened with the ring.

“It turns out I’m not exactly good at hiding stuff," Kirk said, taking advantage of the fact that McCoy had no more heavy objects nearby to try and throw at Kirk's face. "Apparently, Spock found it an hour after we beamed back aboard by kissing me. Vulcan touch-telepathy and all. I didn’t realize until Uhura’s message. I guess he wanted to be the one to propose.” Kirk smiled, a dreamy look on his face that immediately made McCoy want to gag.

McCoy definitely has never, ever met anyone as infuriating as James T. Kirk.

**Author's Note:**

> One day I'll look back at this and regret it so much.


End file.
